Content marketing is overwhelming: There’s a ton of content to create and amplify, a lot of trends to keep in mind and a lot of tools to try.
Content marketing is one of the fastest moving industries.
These days a digital marketer has to balance social, content, email, and other inbound marketing tactics.
Content Tools
Here are 9 content tools to help.
1. Plan Your Content with CoSchedule
CoSchedule is a platform I have been using for a long time, and I love it. It makes planning content and scheduling it on social media so much easier. It works as a WordPress plugin, creating a section in your dashboard where you can plan posts, assign tasks, give details, schedule posts to auto-publish, and update social media.
This has not only cut down on content marketing tasks for me, but it has made running a team easier, and editing tasks easier.
2. Research and Optimize Your Content with TextOptimizer
TextOptimizer is the tool that drives my whole content creation process: From ideation to search optimization.
It starts with “Topic ideas” providing you with the list of popular questions in your niche. Pick any and it will search for that question in Google and using semantic analysis return the list of:
- Related terms and concepts
- Subtopics
- Related questions
Both subtopics and questions help me break content into sections for easier readability, and related terms drive my research as they show me what should be included in the content.
Once I have my content written, I run the tool again, now letting it compare my text to what Google returns for my core query. TextOptimizer will score my article and, if needed, show me where it can be improved.
3. Create Visuals with Visme
Visme is my most productive image editing tools. I have a bunch of cool templates there for visual quotes, header images, etc., so I just go there to edit them with new text and backgrounds (Takes me seconds!).
Visme has very powerful templates for infographics and presentations which is why I have been using it.
4. Automate Email Marketing with Mailchimp
Mailchimp is an email marketing platform which offers nice automation features to easier manage your lists.
Recently they have unveiled their automated marketing feature and landing pages (customized and optimized for your brand).
Add that to the fact that their email templates and scheduling systems are actually easy to use, and you have a definite winner. No more frustrating and overly complicated drip templates! You never have to create, delete and recreate email lists, only to find the initial settings were wrong and it won’t let you edit. The platform won’t suddenly go down and leave you stranded.
5. Manage Social Media Updates with MavSocial
MavSocial is a social media management platform allowing to publish and schedule updates to multiple streams with one click of a mouse. They also have a solid support of visual sharing and recurring updates.
Not to mention it’s incredibly affordable. You just fill up you queue with posts, set times every day you want them sent out, organize them based on order, and it will do the rest.
Of course, you still need to make social media posts meant to engage, but this is a simple way to keep your profiles active.
6. Increase Your Content Reach with Viral Content Bee
[Disclosure: VCB is the project I founded]It would be great if you could just post your content on social media, and everyone shares it out for you just because you have a call to action. But we all know that isn’t how it works. If you want to reach new audiences you need a more direct approach.
Viral Content Bee works by putting you in contact with other social media influencers of varying audience sizes. You and those others exchange content, with each posting on behalf of the other. This gives you access to a whole new viewer pool, who will become aware of your brand from another that they trust.
It is a convenient and effective tool, and can lead to long-term connections that can benefit yourself and the others you network with.
7. Monitor Your Content Mentions with BrandMentions
Reputation management requires you to keep up to date on all mentions of you and your industry. In the past I used Google Alerts and Hootsuite for that. Now I still use the first, but instead of the second I use BrandMentions.
It sends alerts and lets you reply in your dashboard. But it is a lot more straightforward and cleaner than other social media dashboards I have used.
8. Research Your Outreach Opportunities with Buzzsumo
What is your competition writing? What content is performing the best? Buzzsumo is a super awesome platform that works by taking information from across the web related to content, and offering it to you to use for targeting your own content campaigns.
Research content from any brand or competitor, see how it is performing, and find out how you match up. Buzzsumo is one of the greatest discovery tools on the web. They offer free searches and data, but it is worth paying for their pro services if you are really serious. Honestly, their agency package is probably the best deal, unless you are a really tiny brand or start up just beginning in the industry.
I love using their Author: search to find where my friends and influencers contribute and get some ideas as to who I need to invite for an expert interview or a guest post.
9. Bring Everything Together with Cyfe
I have been a big believer in Cyfe from the beginning (Disclaimer: long before they became my content marketing client), and it still has no peers when it comes to sheer feature amount for the price. It is an all-in-one business platform that works by giving you all the power over the tool.
I use it to keep a lot of content marketing accounts, spreadsheets, stats and to-do lists handy.
You are only limited by your imagination. Best of all, the premium costs $19 per month for all of this, or $14 per month if you pay the annual fee. It is safe to say it is worth the cost.
Do you have a content marketing tool you think deserves to be on the list? Please share in the comments! I’d love to check that one out!
Image: Shutterstock
Now that we have the tools, we should us to our benefit to create better content for our audience.
This is a really useful article with some really great tools. CoSchedule is my personal top tools when it comes to content marketing.
Ann: I will check out TextOptimizer and also revisit your site, Viral Content Bee! 😉
Hi Ann,.
Great list here.
I am already using two of them, but rest all are new to me.
Will surely check the rest. Thanks for sharing.
I am here via Bizsugar where this is curated, and I upvote it and shared a comment.
Keep sharing.
Best Regards.
~ Phil
Nice article Ann, we are a content writing agency and these effective content marketing strategies were really helpful for us to know the challenges faced at campaigns.